SNS: Unleashing the Power of Our 21st-Century Kids

Feature: SNS Special Letter: Unleashing the Power of Our 21st-Century Kids

Why New Goals?

A Proposal to Bring Our Two Great Educational Traditions Back Together

A New Paradigm

Today’s Kids Can, and Should, Add Value

Why Now?

A New Mindset: Moving Beyond the MESS

“Education to Better Their World” vs. Incremental Improvements

Applied Passion, or “Apprenticeship to the World”

Never Before Feasible

New Ends, New Means, New Support

How to Get There

Finding Real-World Projects

The Benefits

About Marc Prensky

—-

Publisher’s Note: In addition to serving as a leader in the SNS Project Inkwell Initiative for many years, Marc Prensky has been a nationally recognized thinker and author on the subject of technology in K-12 schools. Many people know him today for having coined the now-ubiquitous term “digital natives” in describing the chasm in technology abilities between children and their parents a decade ago. But today he has earned a place at the peak of practice in explaining, from a deep understanding of their own views and abilities, how best to engage children in learning – and doing – while harnessing technologies they already know and use.

In this week’s discussion, Marc puts forward the simple, yet distant, goal of moving away from lecturing and toward student engagement in their communities, in the world, as a natural incentive to creating a more useful, and more usable, curriculum. It also happens to excite students, and, in a time of many social disruptions, may add to the glue that holds us all together. For me, this is required reading. The best way to save the world, if it is savable, will be through ideas like his. – mra.